Kolbus America

Printers generally like to talk about investments they’ve made in print technologies—offset or digital. Perhaps that’s because it suggests they’re doing well and that they’re investing in their customers’ businesses. Besides, talking about a slick, new machine that requires little to no makeready time and gets up to color with minimal effort is sexy. Well, comparatively speaking. The clunkier “back-office” equipment found in the typical finishing department is perhaps not as provocative, but talk to most any book printer or trade binder, and they’ll likely confide that the bindery machines are the real workhorses. Indeed, investing in the bindery is just as important

Acme Bookbinding's newest worker can't get injured on the job when doing back-breaking work. The reason: It's a robot. One of the most labor-intensive and expensive tasks in our industry is the chore of cutting cover materials for hardcover bindings. Generally, cutting cover materials is not a problem for large edition bindings. Kolbus and Crawley have furnished the industry with equipment where cover materials cut from rolls are de-curled, and are either sheeted or cut to size, with remarkable efficiency. Still, lifting a 54" roll of covering material, and mounting it into a cloth cutting machine, is hard, back-breaking work. These days, with larger edition runs increasingly

For binding, it's not enough to be fast; it also has to be strong. That's why Muller Martini (www.mullermartini.com) teamed-up with digital printing provider Océ Printing Systems (www.oceusa.com). For the first time this year, Muller's AmigoDigital perfect-binding system linked to an Océ DemandStream 8090CX digital printing system with Hunkeler paper handling equipment. The result: A workflow that will produce commercial-quality paperback books in a single pass. "We maintain that quality quotient by incorporating into the AmigoDigital the same perfect binding techniques we use in our high-volume equipment," says Andrew J. Fetherman, manager of Muller Martini's Digital Finishing Division. Based on Muller Martini's

The PRINT shows have long been a site for Timsons to showcase its presses. In 1991, the company showed the T32 horizontal web book press. Six years later, at PRINT 97, Timsons introduced the T48A arch press. So, when discussing how to present the new Zero Makeready Press (ZMR) at PRINT 01, the company decided it wanted to do something special. As Timsons has long supported literacy projects, a member of the sales team suggested they partner with Literacy Chicago. From there, the idea to publish the work of local school children was born. Paul Riportella, customer project manager, says, "We were really